suite could ask for; and the silent men who prepared it will
always be remembered for their discretion and manly hospitality....
Neither of them appeared to KNOW me NOR ANY OF OUR PARTY.... But those
gallant fellows are adepts at dissimulation.... I'm certain that the
tall, slender and soldierly bearing officer will remember the day
we had our STRAWBERRIES at Carlton Terrace, and the slender, willowy
Duchess who forgot her fan until he picked it up and brought it to her
AT MY TABLE, where she paused for a moment to say to me, 'MY FATHER IS
IN LONDON AND WISHES TO SEE YOU BADLY.'... I am certain he remembers
what I told her about the Gordons and the Devons in that slaughter at
the Somme,--when so few of those brave lads returned!... If we ever
meet again I shall thank him for the robes and provisions and motor
trucks he furnished to transport us safely rolled up in army tents
for many rough miles across the country in the direction of CHANYI
LAKE...."

39. We find this entry of the diarist next:

"I have never beheld a more beautiful landscape than the scene before
me.... I am writing this on the banks of Altai Lake.... The balsam
from the cone-like firs along the gorges surcharges the air with an
intoxicating flavor and reflect their inverted gracefulness in the
calm waters of the lake.... The mountains sloping up from either side
are delineated in the mirroring surface and form an archway for the
snow-capped and broken pinnacle that towers above the others like a
sentinel brooding in his frosty and eternal isolation.... Far off in
the distance I can see the black and white walls of the KATUN GLACIER
and know that, throughout this region, gold and silver, as well as
lead and copper, most certainly abound.... In our unending tramp today
I have discovered many evidences of the presence of zinc and nickel
and other minerals lying around.... My 'prisoner' tells me that there
are mines already working in the upper part of the Talovsky River and
that the copper runs very high in the vicinity of Chudak.... Alice
wrote to Princess G---- today at T----.... I am NOT much impressed nor
FAVORABLY by the attitude of these natives in the hills.... They seem
to be a mongrel mixture of Tartar and Mongolian who are always ready,
like the huge ungainly bears we have encountered in our pilgrimage, to
grapple and devour one for the mere pleasure of seeing blood!... Maria
seems quite interested in these notes,--today she insisted on giving